Fannie Mae Dees Park: Created by artist Pedro Silva with neighborhood volunteers, the dragon, here July 22, 2003, is a great source of entertainment for kids at Fannie Mae Dees Park. P. Casey Daley / The Tennessean

For a city that strives to be the "greenest" in the Southeast, Nashville has a ways to go.

Atlanta, Tampa, Raleigh and Orlando all rank higher (as does rival Austin) in a national report released Wednesday by a nonprofit parks advocacy group.

Nashville ranked 54th out of the 100 largest cities in the U.S. for its parks system. Trust For Public Land scored each city's number of parks, their size, financial resources, amenities and distance to residents.

Only 37 percent of Nashville residents live within a 10-minute walk from a park, while the median was 70 percent of residents across the 100 largest cities. That was a big drag on the city's score.

"I think we’ve gotten much much better over the last decade of acquiring and making available public land," said Brian Taylor, board chairman of the Nashville Parks Foundation. "But this shows we still have a ways to go."

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People enjoy the Watauga Lake that runs along Centennial Park and the green space of OneCity development in Nashville, Tenn., Saturday, July 7, 2018.(Photo: Lacy Atkins / The Tennessean)

On the plus side, the median Nashville park was nearly 17 acres, while the national median was 5 acres.

Tim Netsch, assistant director of the Metro Board of Parks & Recreation, said the large parks in Nashville are by design.

They are the "defining strengths of our system and unique in the eastern US, Netsch said in a statement. "For city residents to enjoy a big rural field or wild forest close to home is a priority for Nashville."

The report included parkland managed by Metro Parks and Recreation, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and state agencies.

For amenities, Nashville scored about the middle of the pack for the number of dog parks, playgrounds, and recreation/senior centers per capita.

The Nashville parks master plan targets more amenities by 2027: 65 more playgrounds, 100 more basketball courts, 481,100 square feet of new community centers, and five more splash pads.

The report's authors tallied up the amount of public and private spending on parks, including from nonprofits and other groups like the Parks Foundation. In Nashville, it came to about $81 per resident, while the national median was $83.

In recent years Nashville has spent more on land acquisition and construction compared to peer cities, Netsch said, but Metro lags on spending for maintenance and operations.

The San Francisco-based Trust For Public Land advocates that "every person —regardless of their income, race or zip code" should be able to access a park within a 10-minute walk from their home.